Hill of Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘. . . my dear, you do not know how hard it is to please everyone. God knows, I have tried, and look where it has left me.’

  Doll patted the old girl’s well-padded thigh, looking over at the tired remains of the gargantuan meal consumed by the rich and famous. One or two weary-looking servants were beginning to drift into the tent in order to clear up the mess. She imagined that was what the old lady meant – that she was used to being left out with the dregs.

  ‘Well, we can at least find a bed tonight. Some are not so lucky. My name’s Doll Pocket, by the way. What’s yours?’

  For a moment, Doll was aware of a strange look in the other woman’s eyes. Then she laughed again, more coarsely with her mouth wide open, exposing her tonsils to Doll’s view. When she had managed to control her outburst, she spoke in those melodious tones again.

  ‘You can call me Hat . . . Hattie Vaughan, dear. Now off you go. I shall be fine. They will look after me.’

  She waved vaguely at two well-dressed men who were hovering at the entrance to the tent. One had a head of black curly hair and thick mustachios to match, his puffed-out chest and military uniform making Doll think he was a continental – French or Italian, maybe. The other’s naval jib and dress sword, together with a languid look, was a clear sign to Doll that he was an upper-class Englishman of the sort she most disliked. He was probably of no great ancestry himself, but put on airs and looked down on anyone not of the highest rank.

  Her new friend, Hattie, waddled over to them and, much to Doll’s surprise, they fawned over her as if she was of high estate and not some ageing trollop. Maybe she had connections with the Prince Regent – or King, as he now was by some months. He was a rake of the greatest degree. Doll even wondered if Mrs Vaughan could be another in a long line of mistresses that included Mrs Fitzherbert, the Countess of Jersey and the Marchioness of Hertford – to name but a few whom the one-time Prince Regent had rogered. Hattie took each of her beaux by the arm and walked out of the tent and into the night. Doll, remembering her assignation with Joe and a spade, hurried after them.

  As she picked her way over the obstacle course of guy-ropes and tent-pegs, she passed the Trevithick Flyer. Its boiler was now cold, and the device gave the appearance of somnolence. Or death. Unlike the carriage standing next to it. It was a small Tilbury gig, inside which someone was burning the midnight oils. She could make out, by the light of one of the side lamps, the silhouette of a man bent over a writing slope. The folding top of the Tilbury was pulled up, and as she passed the gig, she saw the man was scribbling in a notebook. He was bowed low, however, and his nether limbs were wrapped in a horse-blanket against the chill of the night. She could not make out more than his dark greatcoat, and thinning brown hair straggling down below his beaver. His hunched shoulders suggested someone on a very secretive task, and Doll’s interest was piqued. She was about to sneak up on him to assuage her curiosity, when she heard a hissing sound from behind her. She looked back at a gap between two areas of canvas, and saw the shape of a man hidden in a heavy greatcoat holding two spades. She stepped back cautiously from the Tilbury gig.

  ‘Joe Malinferno, you nearly made me jump out of my skin.’

  Malinferno dragged her further away from the man in the gig before he spoke.

  ‘What were you doing, poking your nose in where it is not wanted? We have a job to do. I have been waiting ages for you to meet me behind the duchess’s tent. I had to come looking for you.’

  He thrust a spade at her, and she stared at it in horror.

  ‘You don’t think I’m going to use that, do you? I will ruin my dress, and my gloves.’

  Malinferno refrained from suggesting she take both off in that case. He knew when Doll was not in the mood for his innuendo. He simply growled in frustration, and stalked off through the encampment. His noble anger was spoiled by the fact that he tripped over a guy-rope and nearly fell headlong into someone’s tent. Whoever it was, their snores suggested Joe had failed to wake him with his clumsiness.

  Doll stifled a giggle and followed him to the edge of the ring of tents where the duchess’s gilded bivouac stood. They huddled together round the back like two schoolboys bunking off school to attend a hiring fair. Malinferno produced the much-folded sheet of paper that Augustus Bromhead had given to him.

  ‘I’ve been looking at Hawkins’ map again, and I think at least one of the crosses marked is here.’ He scuffed the toe of his boot on a bare patch of earth a few yards away from the tent wall. Doll peered over his shoulder at the bewildering scratchings on the old piece of paper. She had looked at it before, but the blotchy arrows and crosses still meant nothing to her. She would leave it up to Joe, who seemed confident of his topographic skills. She shrugged, and offered to take his greatcoat.

  ‘The least I can do is hold it while you dig.’

  Malinferno grunted and, shrugging off the heavy coat, he handed it to her. He spat on his hands, and picked up one of the spades. His first thrust in the unyielding turf convinced him this treasure hunt was going to be harder work than he had anticipated. After half an hour of toil, he removed his jacket and loosened his cravat. Much to his indignation, Doll spread his greatcoat on the ground, and lay down on it. She yawned, staring up at the almost full moon that illuminated the scene. Grimly, Malinferno dug on. After an hour, all he had to show for his efforts was a very deep hole, some rusty nails and two rather worn old coins. As well as some blisters on his palms. He rubbed the coins vigorously, but could not figure out whose head was on them.

  ‘I shall have to take them back to Augustus to see if they are worth anything. Maybe I should dig elsewhere.’

  His comment as to the appropriateness of the site he had chosen was lost on Doll. She was fast asleep with his coat wrapped snugly around her. Just as he was about to call out to her and wake her up, there was a wail from within the duchess’s tent.

  Doll started into wakefulness. ‘What on earth was that?’

  ‘Some noise from the duchess’s tent.’

  By this time Doll was sitting up, clutching Malinferno’s greatcoat around her bare shoulders.

  ‘A noise? It was more like a banshee scream.’ She shivered. ‘Go and see what it was, Joe.’

  ‘Send the poor bloody infantry in, as usual.’

  Doll huffed, and waved her hands at Joe, encouraging him to his feat of bravery.

  ‘Please, Joe.’

  Malinferno was unsure what he might find in the tent, and gripped his spade all the tighter. He stalked round the tent’s perimeter, advanced towards the tent flap, and nervously lifted it. In the darkness, he could just make out the shape of the crate that held what was left of the duchess’s mummy. Beyond it was one of the largest beds he had ever seen. In fact he had never seen a larger one, especially one marooned on a hillside in the middle of nowhere. A woman sat on the edge of the bed staring fixedly at the wooden crate, the lid of which was askew. Malinferno breathed a sigh of relief. The duchess must have woken in the night, accidentally dislodged the lid of the crate, and been frightened by the rictus grin of the mummy’s embalmed head. But as he lifted the flap of the tent higher to gain access, the moonlight spilled inside, and he saw the woman was not the Duchess of Avon. It was the old trollop. She was breathing heavily, her bare bosom heaving, and pointing to the makeshift coffin. Malinferno took a step towards her, and tried to calm her nerves.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, madam. It is only the remains of a long-dead pharaoh. He can do you no harm.’

  The woman took a deep breath, and with her Germanic accent, roughly put Malinferno right. ‘What is in the box is not long dead. And it can most assuredly do me great harm, young man.’

  She waved a finger at the crate imperiously, and a puzzled Malinferno went to take a look. Inside the coffin was not the dried corpse of an Egyptian pharaoh, but the still-warm body of a once vigorous-looking, soldierly man with thick black hair and full moustachios. He looked back at the old woman, whose face appeared to go grey before his eyes. She
looked as if she might expire in front of him, and he realised he was standing there with a weapon of violence in his hand. He laid the spade on the ground and, uneasily, called quietly to Doll.

  ‘Doll, I need your help in here.’

  Hardly daring to tear his eyes off the old woman, he heard the rustle of Doll’s dress behind him. She hissed in his ear.

  ‘What’s up now? Lawks!’

  Either she had peered over his shoulder and seen the body, or observed the state of her erstwhile companion of an hour ago. Whichever it was, Malinferno prayed that Doll would take control of the situation. Because it was going all to hell in front of his eyes. The old woman slumped on the bed, her fat rump presented to his view. Her swoon caused the bed to tilt alarmingly.

  Doll slid past Joe, and pulled the bedsheet over Hattie Vaughan, feeling her wrist for a pulse. Hattie groaned and sat up, causing the bed once again to tip like a ship in a stormy sea.

  ‘I’m fine, dearie. I just had a funny turn, is all. My stomach feels queer, but then, that’s no surprise after seeing my dear Sacchi in that box there.’

  Doll looked for the first time into the box that should have contained the mummy they had worked on that evening. She gasped.

  ‘Joe, there’s a body in the crate. And I don’t mean Ozzy, the old pharaoh.’

  Doll had a penchant for naming all the mummies that passed through their hands as Ozymandias, after the great carved head that had been brought back to England from Egypt four years earlier. And when two years later, Shelley had written his poem of the same name, she was confirmed in her prejudice that all dead Egyptians were called by that wonderful name. Malinferno chose not to correct her, as he was none the wiser either concerning the name of the mummy they had recently unrolled. Besides, they had more urgent matters to resolve.

  ‘Yes, I know. The old girl called him Sacchi.’

  Doll glared at Malinferno for calling Hattie so before her face. But then she began to look more closely at the body.

  ‘Look here. He’s got a big gash in his neck.’

  Malinferno watched in amazement as Doll’s head and shoulders disappeared into the crate, leaving her hips and legs wriggling around as she squirmed further inside. Personally, he could not get so close to a fresh corpse, much preferring the musty odour of someone long dead. Hattie was looking on surprise too, and Doll’s antics must have tickled her. She broke out into a coarse peal of laughter.

  ‘Poor Sacchi, he would have loved a romp with you, dearie. But alas all that is over for him now.’

  Doll wriggled back out of the box, rather red-faced from her exertions.

  ‘There is little blood in the box, so he must have been shoved into it some time after he was killed. And there are slashes on the fingers of his left hand. He must have got his hand on the blade, trying to save himself. But he was too late.’

  Hattie gaped at Doll. ‘I had you for a whore, young lady. It seems you are something else altogether.’

  Doll laughed out loud. ‘I had you for a trollop, Hattie Vaughan. Now I am not so sure.’

  At that moment, another man burst through the tent flap. It was the naval officer Doll had seen accompanying Hattie along with the now deceased Italian gentleman by the name of Sacchi. The navy man seemed hot and rather unnerved, speaking hurriedly and with somewhat slurred words.

  ‘Are you safe, Your Majesty? I came to relieve Sacchi, but he is nowhere to be seen.’ He stared at Doll Pocket and Joe Malinferno. ‘Who are these people?’

  ‘Lieutenant Houghton!’

  The old woman gave him a stern look, but it was too late to hide the truth now. Doll and Malinferno had heard what the man had called Hattie. It suddenly dawned on them who the old trollop was. She was no less than the errant Queen of England, Caroline of Brunswick.

  Caroline, after a failed marriage to the Prince of Wales, as he was then, had retired abroad to a life bent on embarrassing England and the royal household. Openly taking a string of lovers, she had travelled Europe causing scandal. In retaliation, the Prince – no mean philanderer himself – initiated secret commissions and open smears to discredit her. The Princess of Wales, using a string of villas in Italy, finally settled down to the extent that she fixed on one of her lovers – Pergami by name – and was most often seen in his company. She was congenitally unable to moderate her behaviour, however. Servants were known to report to the Prince’s spies that ‘the princess is very fond of fucking’, having seen her in public with her hand inside Pergami’s trousers. Or having observed him emerging from the Queen’s chamber dressed only in his shirt.

  Close to accepting a divorce, everything changed for Caroline, when her father-in-law died. She was now Queen, and horrified the government of the day by suggesting she should return to England to take up her place on the throne alongside her husband. Malinferno was familiar with a few Radicals whose sympathy lay with the Queen. And at a time when the common mob was agitating for better conditions, the government was afraid that Caroline could be a rallying point. To many, she was an injured queen and a weak woman, who needed the mob’s help to fight against a tyrant king. When she had finally arrived in London the cry was ‘The Queen for ever, the King in the river.’

  Malinferno was sure he had read in The Times that she had escaped the incessant pressure of the mob by hiding in a mansion on the Thames. He was surprised to have found her at an exotic soiree on Solsbury Hill. He bowed his head to the tired woman sitting on the edge of the grand bed, that was tilted at an alarming angle.

  ‘Your Majesty, forgive me for not recognising you. The Times reported that you were at Brandenburg House in Hammersmith, on the edge of London.’

  Caroline sighed. ‘Indeed I was, and the countryside suited me. But those infernal watermen of the Thames made a trade of offering trips to get sightings of me walking in the gardens. When the Duchess of Avon mentioned her little soiree on Solsbury Hill, I determined to escape in secret, and have a few days unobserved. It seems I failed, however, and that there is a spy and agent provocateur in the camp right now.’

  As the Queen spoke to Malinferno, Houghton had drifted over towards the crate. He placed a hand on the edge and leaned on it in a nonchalant pose. Caroline noticed this, and turned to him.

  ‘I would not get too close, if I were you, Nicholas.’

  The unenlightened Houghton looked down at his hand, expecting that he was being warned the wood was dirty or wet. He began to brush his hands together, and looked down at the crate. His eyes widened at the contents of the box, and he slumped against Doll Pocket in a faint.

  ‘Oh, not again.’

  She groaned as another man’s head landed on her bosom, and in a not too gentle way, dumped his prostrate form on the grassy floor of the tent.

  Caroline smiled sadly. ‘I would hazard a guess that he is a naval man who has not been much under fire, then.’

  Doll laughed. ‘Nor will he be much help in present circumstances, it appears. I suppose Your Majesty is innocent of the crime concerning the body in our crate, then?’

  Malinferno felt his face burning at Doll’s boldness, and began to apologise for his companion’s social gaffe. ‘Majesty, I am afraid Miss Pocket is unused to—’

  Caroline interrupted him before he could go any further. ‘Stuff and nonsense, sir. Miss Pocket has asked the most necessary of questions in the circumstances. And I think you should both still call me Hattie, while I am incognito. Hat Vaughan was a name Sir William Gell gave me when we . . . we needed to be discreet, if you get my drift. It will suit the situation well for now.’

  Houghton groaned and began to revive, sitting up with his head in his hands. Making a valiant effort to repair his reputation, he tried again to take control.

  ‘Majesty, let me deal with this. I . . . oooh.’

  Having made the mistake of taking one more look at the crate, he almost swooned away again, collapsing this time on the edge of the great bed. The Queen poked at him and, getting no response, slid past him to examine the content
s of the crate. Though she gave a sharp intake of breath, she managed to control her reactions this time. Malinferno could see she was made of sterner stuff than the naval officer, who sat with his head between his knees.

  ‘Perhaps then you could answer Miss Pocket’s question, Your—Mrs Vaughan. Are we to eliminate you from the list of potential murderers?’

  The old woman looked grim. ‘I can only give you my word that I am innocent. I believe Miss Pocket saw me leave the marquee in the company of both the deceased, and . . .’ she poked Houghton with her finger again. ‘. . . the lieutenant here. We came back to the tent that the duchess had so kindly vacated for me, and I retired, leaving Signor Sacchi on guard outside the entrance.’

  ‘And the box was there all the time?’

  ‘Yes. I was led to understand that the duchess had it brought to her tent after your . . . enlightening lecture. Neither she nor I had any qualms about being next to a corpse. In fact, there was something quite thrilling about sleeping with a pharaoh.’

  Malinferno was about to advise her that the mummy was probably not that of a pharaoh, but of a priest or rich trader. But he could see she was keen to talk, and he let her continue.

  ‘I fell into a deep sleep that was broken only by some noise that intruded into my dreams.’

  ‘What sort of noise, Hattie? Can you describe it?’

  It was Doll’s turn to carry on the interrogation, and Malinferno marvelled at her ability to act quite normally in the presence of such a notorious figure as Queen Caroline. In only a few days, this woman standing before them was effectively to go on trial in Parliament. A Bill was to be presented in the House that accused the Queen of conducting herself with ‘indecent and offensive familiarity’ with Bartolomeo Pergami, and of carrying on a ‘licentious, and adulterous intercourse’ with him. The end result of a vote in the House in favour of the Bill would be to strip the Queen of her title and prerogatives, and dissolve her marriage with the King. Now, she seemed more concerned with establishing her innocence as concerns the murder of one of her paramours. Pergami had been left behind on the continent, but it appeared there were others in her entourage who kept her amused. Sacchi had obviously been one of them, and it would have suited her to have him silenced.